


Yesterday was But a Dream

by janne_d



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-10
Updated: 2007-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-05 14:32:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janne_d/pseuds/janne_d
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode tag for the Doctor Who episode 'The Last of the Time Lords'.  What might have happened to the rest of Torchwood 3 during the Year That Never Was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yesterday was But a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for angst and character death ahoy (though given the episode in question, that shouldn't be a surprise). Cheers to torakowalski for the beta.

Ianto is in Lukla in Nepal, discussing with their local porter what equipment they'll need to pick up to help them chase reports of an alien artefact in the Himlayan foothills near Everest.

He's eating his dal-bhat and listening to Owen complaining about the food and the likelihood they'll all get altitude sickness. Ianto's eyes are drawn back to the mountains, reaching up into the sky, so he's the first one to see it rip open and he drops his bowl onto the veranda.

They're all on their feet, looking up at the jagged gash, purple and pink and so wrong to look at, like the flashing lines that Ianto gets with migraines. He thinks of the Rift, knows the others are too. Gwen is saying not again, Tosh is trying to get a mobile signal and Owen is white and shaking to Ianto's left.

There's black in the middle of the rip, and it turns into something falling, falling so fast, and resolves into lots of things and suddenly they're there, metallic spheres that fly and there are screams, screams everywhere as they kill. Ianto sees people in the street hit by lasers, people shredded by blades, hears Gwen and Owen yelling incoherently in rage and fear because their guns don't stop them and they have no other weapons, and he grabs Tosh, and shoves her inside, yelling for the others to follow as their porter drops dead on the floor.

And he's running, looking for somewhere to hide, wishing they were still in the Hub, that Jack was here, that he knew what to do…

~

Gwen is sitting on the floor, wishing she could cry like Tosh is or rage like Owen, but she's tired, so tired. They've spent the last few months working in forced labour in the daytime, trying to manage some form of resistance at night, everything they try countered by the bloody spheres' technology, or the fear of the people around them, the fear that lies over everything, fills every breath.

They've tried so hard, and for what? Rounded into the city, living in barracks, scavenging for knowledge, for technology, for any bit of hope, but there's things they never had a chance against and can't fight, not like this.

Because there aren't enough resources, because the cullings left enough people that the Master doesn't have to care about the health of his labour and there's nothing a doctor can do, even though Owen tries so, because there are too many people here living on top of each other and not enough clean water.

They can't fight the spheres, but at least they could fool themselves they had a chance, that with time they'd find a way.

But the cholera was too fast for any hope. No possible retaliation. No point in fighting.

Gwen reaches out and closes Ianto's eyes. If they're lucky, they might be able to bury him properly, if they're lucky they might catch it too…

~

Owen is standing in the factory, fists clenched, looking down at the body that used to be a woman before the spheres ripped her apart in one of their fucking random lessons.

He's done his best to keep everyone alive, keep his team alive, because that's what Jack would do and Owen is trying to keep them together for him, just in case he ever comes back, and even if he doesn't. But he's failing, has already failed because Ianto is dead, and Gwen doesn't speak much any more, is less and less there every day and Owen isn't a shrink and can't reach her and Tosh is running herself ragged on too little sleep and too much stress, trying to connect with what's left of UNIT and the rest of the resistance and find a way to fight.

There isn't a way though. Owen knows that, because the spheres come and kill for kicks, for a whim, and the Master controls everything and they can't reach him, and Owen is fucking sick of sitting here waiting while people die all around him and he can't stop it, can't stop the team falling apart.

He's not going to wait anymore, he's through, he's going to fight now, and he throws his tool at the sphere as it leaves and knocks it off course, throws everything he can get his hands on as everyone else flees and three more pop up, and he's snarling and there's pain everywhere…

~

Tosh is in the street, collapsed against a wall and looking at the sky.

It's been a year.

A year, a year since everything fell to pieces, a year watching the others fall too and forcing herself to keep moving, keep trying to make things better, because Jack would never have given up and she won't either. A year in which she's lost everything and everyone but she couldn't ever stop to breathe and mourn because she knew if she did she'd never move again.

A year forming a resistance that is so fragile and hopelessly overmatched, a year reaching out to the others who could still think and plan, hearing the rumours, the whispers of a chance. She was here three months back, Martha Jones, the messenger and the message, Tosh listening from the shadows as she told her tale and spread her hope out across the world.

It's a hope that's too late for them. Too late for Ianto, too late for Owen. Too late for Gwen, who stopped speaking after Ianto and then eating after Owen and left Tosh alone. Too late for Tosh's family, killed with all her people as Japan burned. Too late.

But as the Master's countdown starts, she closes her eyes against the tears she can't stop and thinks _'Doctor'_, says it with everyone else, with everything she still has left, and oh she _hopes_…

~~

In the mornings they all got up and went into the Hub as normal. They were just dreams.

Because in the real world, they had got the news about Saxon's mad, doomed attempt to seize control and headed back to Britain instead of into the mountains, and Jack had been waiting for them in the Hub with grins and hugs all round.

And so they ignored the bags under each others' eyes every day and the yawns and the way Jack watched over them with anxious eyes above his smiles. And if Tosh sometimes wondered or Gwen thought about being retconned, and they all fussed about each others' safety in a way they never used to, no-one ever said anything.

None of it had happened.

No apocalypse, no despair, no ugly deaths.

They were just dreams.


End file.
